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The Imagination as Unifying Principle in the Works of Blake and Wordsworth

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2024

John A. Lambo
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Extract

The central concern of this paper is to prove that Blake and Wordsworth, in spite of some revealing differences between them, essentially share the same world view. Before showing how this works, we first of all should discuss, however briefly, the main difference between them.

The main difference between Blake and Wordsworth is perhaps discernible in the way they respond to Nature or the physical frame of things. Here, their remarks on each other would be quite illuminating. Though there is no evidence that they knew each other personally, there is concrete proof that they read some of one another's works and even commented on them. Three sources immediately come to mind in this regard: first, there is Samuel Palmer's anecdote that Wordsworth borrowed a copy of Blake's Songs of Innocence and of Experience from a friend that “he read and read and took … home to read again”; second, we have Blake's 1826 annotations to the poems of Wordsworth contained in Keynes' Nonesuch Edition of Blake; third, there is Henry Crabb Robinson's Diary, Reminiscences, and Correspondence.

Type
Research Article
Information
Diogenes , Volume 41 , Issue 164 , December 1993 , pp. 59 - 72
Copyright
Copyright © 1993 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)

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References

Notes

1. The term “Nature,” as it applies to Blake and Wordsworth, means the external world: animals, birds, fishes, plants, hills, mountains, rocks, the sea, and so on. Man also forms part of Nature.

2. Quoted by John Purkis in A Preface to Wordsworth, Preface Book Series, (London: Longmans, 1970), p. 167.

3. H.C. Robinson, Diary, Reminiscences, and Correspondence, in Nineteenth-Century Accounts of William Blake, ed., Joseph Anthony Wittreich, Jr., (Florida: Scholars, Facsimiles and Reprints, 1970), p. 83.

4. Ibid., p. 99.

5. Ibid., pp. 66-67, 99.

6. Poetry and Prose of William Blake: Complete in one volume, 4th Edition, ed., Geoffrey Keynes, (London: The Nonesuch Library, 1975), pp. 821-22.

7. Ibid., p. 821.

8. Ibid

9. H.C. Robinson, op. cit., pp. 74-75.

10. Wordsworth: Poetical Works, ed., Thomas Hutchinson, revised by Ernest De Selincourt, (London Oxford New York: Oxford University Press, 1969), p. 750.

11. Blake, op. cit., p. 527.

12. Ibid., 580. In “Vision of the Last Judgment,” Blake States that “This World of Imagination if Infinite & Eternal,.” p. 639.

13. Ibid., “The Everlasting Gospel,” p. 139.

14. In his letter dated 22 November 1802 to Thomas Butts, Blake claims that: Now I a fourfold vision see,

And a fourfold vision is given me;

'Tis fourfold in my supreme delight

and threefold in soft Beulah's night

And twofold Always. May God us keep From single vision & Newton's sleep! (Ibid., pp. 861-62).

15. Wordsworth, op. cit., p. 86.

16. Blake, op. cit., p. 652.

17. Ibid., p. 835.

18. Wordsworth, op. cit., p. 164. Wordsworth's description of this mood continues: That serene and blessed mood,

In which the affections gently lead us on, And even the motion of our human blood Almost suspended, we are laid asleep

In body, and become a living soul:

While with an eye made quiet by the power Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,

We see into the life of things.

(Ibid., p. 164).

19. Wordsworth, The Prelude, XIII, (1805), ed., Ernest De Selincourt, revised by Helen Darbishire, (London New York Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1960), p. 233.

20. Blake, op. cit., pp. 821, 639.

21. The Prelude, VI, pp. 99-100.

22. Blake, op. cit., p. 846.

23. Ibid., Jerusalem, IV, p. 564.

24. Ibid., Vala, or the Four Zoas, IX, p. 352.

25. Wordsworth, op. cit., p. 754.

26. Blake, op. cit., Jerusalem, III, p. 525; Jerusalem, III, p. 494.

27. Dorothy Wordsworth, Journals lll The Alfoxden Journal 1788, The Grasmere Journals 1800-1803, ed., Helen Darbishire, (London: Oxford University Press, 1958), p. XIV

28. S.T. Coleridge, Biographia Literaria, ed., George Watson, (London: 1967), pp. 167-68,174.

29. Wordsworth, op. cit., p. 147.

30. Ibid., p. 149.

31. Ibid., p. 377.

32. Blake, op. cit., Letter to Thomas Butts dated 2 October 1800, pp. 846-47.

33. Ibid., Another Verse Letter to Thomas Butts dated 22 November 1802, p. 860.

34. Ibid., p. 118.

35. Clement C.J. Webb, A History of Philosophy (London New York Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1964), pp. 13-14, 36-37.

36. Ibid., pp. 29-30, 82-85.

37. Marian Julian, History of Philosophy, Trans. Stanley Appelbaum and C.C. Strowbridge, (New York: Dover Publications, 1967), pp. 239-41. Cf. also Clement C.J. Webb's A History of Philosophy, op cit., pp. 136-38.

38. The Poems of Alexander Pope, Twickenham Edition, ed., John Butt, (London: Methuen, 1968), p. 514.